Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirmed reporting of a highly publicized clash between himself and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte last year, although he said that such confrontations happen when working on a team. During a Wednesday hearing before the Senate Finance Committee to testify on President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, Bessent faced questions […]
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday said he once told Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Bill Pulte, who President Trump recently tapped to serve as acting head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), that he “was going to kick his a–.” Bessent made the remark while testifying before the Senate…
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confronted Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in a tense scene Wednesday on Capitol Hill over documents that appeared to show the senator’s son met with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2016. Bessent, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, clashed with Wyden, who is the committee’s ranking member, early on in the hearing. […]
Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York argued the new face for the director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, lacks qualifications for the position. “It seems like a pretty poor choice here,” York said on Fox News’s Special Report Tuesday. President Donald Trump tapped Pulte for the position after the previous director, Tulsi Gabbard, resigned […]
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a House panel he is reviewing some contracts pursued by his predecessor Kristi Noem that may have had ties to her allies and promised to turn over a list of all those that have been nixed. The comment came under questioning from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the top Democrat…
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned on Wednesday that any person tapped to serve as director of national intelligence (DNI) must have “extensive national security experience,” sending a pointed message to President Trump after he tapped Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte for the nation’s top intelligence job. McConnell did not name Pulte in his…
I was a news junkie long before it was cool — was it ever cool? — or even common.Growing up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I was probably the only kid on my block, maybe in the entire city and state, who planted himself in front of the television every night to watch Walter Cronkite on CBS News. When I was about eight years old, I could even do an impression of him, articulating his famous sign-off, “And that’s the way it is.” I can still do it today, though you have to be someone of a certain age to appreciate it.I had a fixation with presidents, with war, with history, and nobody delivered the news with more authority, more gravitas, or more sheer trustworthiness than Cronkite. It wasn’t just my opinion. Year after year, he was named the most trusted man in America. When he retired in 1981, I was in high school, and it felt like a seismic event. A seminal moment. Who in God’s name could ever replace the God of the evening news, Walter Cronkite? Dan Rather stepped in and did a terrific job. Now it’s anchored by the woefully incompetent Tony Dokoupil. Who? Exactly. This neophyte wouldn’t have been qualified to be Cronkite’s junior intern.But my devotion to Cronkite was only the beginning. There was also 60 Minutes. I watched that too, for as long as I can remember. Mike Wallace and Ed Bradley were my guys. And I loved Andy Rooney. I can do his impression too, but again, no one knows who he is anymore.The fearlessness and tenacity of the show’s correspondents, and their refusal to let the powerful off the hook, were legendary. It was what journalism looked like at its absolute finest.It was perhaps the love for Cronkite and 60 Minutes that drove me into media and public relations, where I spent 30 years working with hundreds of reporters and media outlets. For a long time in PR, we had two holy grails — a front-page story in the New York Times and a segment on 60 Minutes, positive ones, of course. I was fortunate enough to land five front-page Times stories over my career and one 60 Minutes segment in 1999, tied to Y2K preparedness. Which makes what is happening right now to that network all the more gut-wrenching.Since the loathsome Bari Weiss took over CBS News and Donald Trump began his assault on Black Rock, the nickname for the former CBS headquarters, the network has been in a death spiral of its own making. Weiss has no business running a major network news division. Under her watch, CBS News has become a shadow of itself, and its anchor has devolved into little more than Trump state television. The news division is collapsing at breathtaking speed.And then there’s the tragedy occurring at the beloved 60 Minutes.60 Minutes debuted in 1968 and became, arguably, the most important television program in American history, and remains that today. And, not just in news, but in the entirety of television. Year after year, it ranks among the most-watched programs on the air. It broke stories that changed the country. It featured the most iconic correspondents in broadcast history. It was appointment television, 7 PM on Sunday night, or whenever the late NFL game ended in the fall, you made sure you were parked in front of your set. You were spellbound.It’s now in a freefall.Weiss shockingly dumped the show’s long-time veteran and executive producer, Tanya Simon, and appointed Nick Bilton, a technologist with no traditional broadcast experience, to lead 60 Minutes. He subsequently fired veteran producers and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. The decision caused intense internal backlash, and that’s putting it mildly. It's being murdered, and I’m not the one using such draconian terms. And those firings were only the beginning.Scott Pelley, the former CBS News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent, blew up — and rightly so — this week, tearing into the new leadership of 60 Minutes, calling out the way staff have been treated, the firings, the gutting of the show’s editorial independence. He said Weiss was “murdering” the show. After sticking up for his show, and his colleagues, Pelley was fired, and simultaneously proven wrong. The Trump/CBS paramilitary isn’t murdering the show. They are executing it.Steve Kroft, another legendary 60 Minutes correspondent and my “friend” from the Y2K days, was more blunt, more direct, and more correct. He said, “I never expected it would be executed by the President of the United States.”Trump is doing to 60 Minutes what he did to Stephen Colbert and the CBS Evening News.This trifecta represents the cowardice at CBS toward Trump. It is a direct testament to how thoroughly Paramount and CBS have prostrated themselves before Donald Trump. Here’s the business reality that CBS executives apparently cannot grasp: everyone who has ever bowed down to Donald Trump eventually gets kicked in the teeth. Trump never rewards loyalty. Ever.
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President Trump's decision to nominate Bill Pulte as director of national intelligence caught many of his closest advisors off guard and dealt a significant blow to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, with whom the Federal Housing Finance Agency head has engaged in an ongoing power struggle.According to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, Pulte, who leads the agency overseeing the country's mortgage market, personally approached Trump with an audacious proposal: ascending to the position of director of national intelligence following Tulsi Gabbard's departure.The nomination appears rooted not in foreign policy expertise—Pulte has none—but in what Trump prizes most: unwavering loyalty, the Journal is reporting before adding that, in pitching himself to the president, Pulte promised to become an "unyielding advocate" for Trump's foreign policy agenda and signaled support for the administration's Iran war, according to sources familiar with the conversations.The move represents a major victory for Pulte in his internal administration battles. The Federal Housing Finance Agency director has become a deeply polarizing figure, clashing repeatedly with Trump advisers who have grown frustrated with his aggressive approach and willingness to bypass the chain of command to access the president directly.Trump has reportedly resisted efforts by administration officials to remove Pulte, telling confidants he values the FHFA chief's loyalty above all else.Trump "first raised the idea of appointing Pulte as intelligence director to aides over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter," the Journal is reporting before adding that the fact that president actually pulled the trigger on Pulte's nomination, "caught them by surprise."As for Bessent, one of the president's closest allies in the Cabinet, he was reportedly kept out of the loop, the Journal is reporting.Tensions between the Treasury secretary and Pulte reached a boiling point last year when Bessent threatened to punch Trump's housing chief "in the f------ face" after learning that Pulte had been disparaging him to the president, according to the Wall Street Journal.Treasury Department officials, including Bessent, learned of Trump's decision through social media like everyone else. An adviser broke the news to Bessent while he was preparing for a congressional hearing—a humiliating notification for one of the administration's senior economic officials, the report notes.